


Break of Day

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Leverage
Genre: Comfort Food, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 02:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16610171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: Some jobs are harder than others -- especially when you're still struggling to be the good guy.





	Break of Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



Some jobs were harder than others.

That had been true from the very beginning. Sometimes it was clear as crystal that the money grubbing executive was one hundred percent evil and everything they were doing was exactly what needed to be done. Sometimes the client was the perfect picture of the abused, disenfranchised citizen — sweet in such a way that you couldn’t fault them for their naivete and more deserving than anyone of the benefits that destroying a company or exposing a fraudulent banker would bring. Other times, though, it wasn’t quite so simple, and those jobs took their toll.

Everything had seemed perfectly straightforward. The client’s brother had died in a drug trial run by the big pharmaceutical company. Negligence on behalf of the bigwigs in charge of the trial had, of course, been railroaded right out of the courts by the company’s highly paid attorneys. The family didn’t see a dime, and they were just one of a dozen families whose troubles had been swept under the rug. It was clear, of course, that the company would need to either face a massive public scandal or go down entirely in order to pay the piper.

Only, when Hardison cracked the private banking they discovered that Ameritech Pharmaceuticals was the country’s single largest anonymous donor to children’s cancer research. Every major breakthrough in the last decade had, in some way, been possible because of their contributions. Aside from the one faulty drug trial and its subsequent cover-up, Ameritech was actually an ethical brand. They didn’t dump hazardous materials. They didn’t criminally underpay their employees. They didn’t dodge taxes. The CEO took a modest salary and didn’t bother with extravagance so that the maximum amount of their profits could go into the cancer studies. Yes, they’d denied a dozen families a multi-million dollar settlement, but they’d done it so they could give those millions to cancer research instead.

Suffice it to say the phrase “moral conundrum” hadn’t even begun to cover it.

It was easier with Nate and Sophie. Nate would make the hard choice. Sophie would talk them all through it. They’d all lose a little sleep, but after a short while it wouldn’t weigh on them. Eliot didn’t cut his four daily hours of sleep down to two or give up sleep entirely, hellbent on avoiding the memories of all he’d done playing out in his dreams. Hardison didn’t bury his head in one game or another for the sake of distraction. Parker didn’t become withdrawn, a quiet reminder of the emotionally bankrupt creature she’d been before it all started. With Nate and Sophie they could cope because in a way they were not responsible. Not so much anymore.

Eliot was always the first to pull himself out on the other side of the issue when things got rough, and the Ameritech job was no exception. It happened at three a.m. He hadn’t been to sleep in the two days since they’d finished the job and taken a step back to lay low before their next one. Instead he’d been exercising, fixing things around the brew pub that probably didn’t need to be fixed, and pacing—lots of pacing. The pacing was a restless, nervous habit, but it usually managed to bring things into focus. Things like Parker hanging like a bat from the rafters instead of curled up in the massive bed they all shared. Or Hardison passed out with his gaming headset still on. The little things that signified his partners needing a hand to pull themselves out of the pit of despair they’d fallen into. He saw those things as he walked the boards and it snapped him out of his own funk. He was the oldest. The adult. The one with that had walked through the darkest things out of all of them. He knew how to live with the worst that he could be, but them? They had to be reminded that they weren’t the scum of the earth. 

He started by tucking a pillow between Hardison’s head and the keyboard, making sure to place the headset off to one side. Then he shoved a huge, plush cushion under Parker, not because he was afraid she would fall (Parker never fell), but because she would see it and know that he cared. Once they were set, he found his way into the kitchen. Eliot wasn’t always the best at dealing with emotions, but he knew the power of food. The right meal food could snap you out of a funk with no problems. His eyes caught on a row of boxed waffle makers across the top of the cabinets. A little part of his brain groaned in frustration, but he knew the waffle makers were going to be the way to go. Parker had the sweet tooth of a hyperactive toddler and Hardison didn’t care what things tasted like if they’d been made in one of his nerdy appliances. Even Eliot could be convinced to swallow his pride for the right motivations.

When Hardison woke up, it was to the scents of bacon and maple wafting from the brew pub’s kitchen. He didn’t remember falling asleep, and he definitely didn’t remember trading his keyboard out for a pillow from one of the couches. His neck popped in a half dozen places as he stood from his desk chair, and he rolled his wrists on the way to the kitchen to get blood flowing back to a couple of numb places. Eliot was moving around between the countertops and the griddle, his usual bandana in place. Spread across the counter were all of Hardison’s Star Wars waffle irons, each of them steaming in turn.

“What are you doing?” Hardison rumbled, scratching at his chest.

Eliot never stopped moving. “I’m learning to tango, Hardison.” He lifted the lid on the Death Star waffle iron, transferring a perfect waffle to a plate. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” 

Shuffling into the kitchen, Hardison peered over Eliot’s shoulder while the shorter man moved down the line of waffle makers, plated waffles, and added more batter from a different bowl for each one. The Death Star waffles were chocolate. Darth Vader ones looked to be pumpkin spice, stormtroopers were funfetti, BB-8s smelled like lemon with a sprinkle of blueberries, and the Millenium Falcon waffles were that terrifying chunky monkey combination that Parker loved so much. Over on the griddle rows of bacon and sausage patties sizzled.

“You planning to feed half the neighborhood?” he asked, reaching around Eliot to dip a finger in the funfetti batter—only to have his hand whacked with a spatula he’d never seen the hitter pick up. “Hey! Easy on the hands. You know how important these hands are.”

“Oh, I ain’t touchin’ that one,” Eliot snorted, throwing an amused glance with a raised eyebrow over his shoulder at the astronomical number of sex jokes he could make from that statement. “Too easy.” While Hardison spluttered he flipped all the meat on the griddle. “Neither one of you’s been eating right these last couple days. Figured you could use it.”

Trying not to smile, Hardison nodded. They’d been together long enough for him to know what this was. “You might be onto something. I don’t think I’ve seen Parker eat anything but Funyons.” That wasn’t true, but he loved the way it made Eliot twitch. He sidled up behind him, bending forward until he could rest his chin on Eliot’s shoulder as he slid one arm around his waist. He pressed a kiss against the side of his neck. “Thank you.”

“I thought we said no more sexy stuff in the kitchen after that mess with the tonka stuff.”

Eliot groaned. “Tonkatsu, Parker. It’s a Japanese style dish of fried and breaded pork, and the two of you nearly set the kitchen on fire when you knocked over all my prep work for your little afternoon delight.” He shrugged Hardison off, turning to face their girl. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the counters, a filched Millenium Falcon waffle in one hand and an open jar of Nutella in the other.

Parker’s eyebrows furrowed. “It was, like, eight o'clock at night. No one calls that afternoon.”

“That’s not—”

“Just let it go,” Hardison advised, sliding a hand across Eliot’s shoulders as he made his way to Parker. “I think Eliot’s trying to do something really sweet, so maybe we could wait and do that eat like a family thing he likes so much.” He tuned out Eliot’s grumbling response as he leaned in to give Parker a peck on the cheek.

In silent agreement they both sat back to watch as Eliot finished cooking and plating a veritable feast of sugar and meat. They let him lay out the spread at their personal table near the back of the pub and dug in as soon as he gave the go ahead. Parker asked questions about the recipes while he finished cooking, but her chatter trailed off the moment she had a plate full of sugar in front of her. Eliot watched her eat with a small smile on his face and leaned across the table to add extra dollops of homemade whipped cream every time she dragged more waffles onto her plate. Hardison ate more reasonably, but he still found his plate piled high with extra food every time he took his eyes away from Eliot for too long. 

With their early breakfast finished and the dishes washed (Hardison scrubbed, Eliot dried, Parker put them away) they all settled in on the couch. It was the first time they’d really settled down to be together since the job wrapped up. Hardison picked the movie, but none of them were really paying attention to whatever geek epic he’d selected. Eliot and Hardison sat hip to hip, Eliot’s feet propped on the coffee table and Hardison’s arms stretched across the back of the couch. Parker stretched across both of their laps, a polka dot blanket draped over her legs. Halfway through the movie Eliot’s hands found Hardison’s thigh and Parker’s knee beneath the blanket.

“We can always come back to this,” he muttered quietly. Neither Parker nor Hardison acknowledged that he’d spoken, but they both leaned just a fraction closer. He squeezed Parker’s knee, and his fingers walked the threads in Hardison’s pants. “No matter how far we think we’re falling or how hard a job rides us, we will always be able to be right here at the end of the day.” He shifted just enough to tip them both closer. “With each other, where we belong. This doesn’t go away when it gets rough.”

Parker moved. Where she had been leaning against the back of the couch she now settled directly on Eliot’s lap, the knee and thigh of one of her legs pressed against Hardison’s chest. “It’s not this going away that worries me,” she admitted, waving a hand over the three of them on ‘this’. “We’re here. It’s a thing and it’s great.”

“The scary thing is not being sure whether or not we did the right thing,” Hardison added. His arm fell from the back of the couch to drape over Eliot’s shoulders. “What if we forget how to keep doing the right thing?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“He’s not, though,” Parker whispered. On the screen some king or other was making a grand and inspiring speech to his assembled troops. “What if we can’t keep being the good guys without Sophie and Nate to tell us what the good guys do?”

Eliot pressed a kiss into Parker’s hair, moving his hand from her knee to pull her closer against him. “You’re crazy, Parker, but I don’t think you have a bad bone in your body,” he assured her. He squeezed Hardison’s thigh with his other hand to let him know he wasn’t being forgotten. “Making a hard choice doesn’t automatically make us the bad guys again. It just means we’ve found some gray area to work through.” He settled closer down into the couch, pressing against the both of them. “It’s going to be like this sometimes. We’ll feel guilty even when we did the best we could.”

“I don’t like it.” He couldn’t see her face since she’d ducked to hide it against his neck, but he could hear Parker’s pout. Hardison mumbled something in agreement.

“That’s how you know you’re on the right track.” Eliot gave a smile he wasn’t sure either of them could see. “If you can still feel guilty, still be worried that you’re doing the right thing, you’ve got the right reasons at heart.”

Hardison leaned his head against Eliot’s. They were quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that the movie ended and cycled back to the menu. None of them made a move to change it. 

“I love you,” Hardison told them. The menu disappeared and another movie started. Parker and Eliot didn’t say the words back, but they didn’t move away, either. Eliot’s declarations were always in actions. Parker’s were in the lack of running away from feelings. Love could be said in many other ways than three little words.

When the sun finally crested the buildings outside and the morning began in earnest, all three of them were sound asleep, tangled up in one another on the couch.


End file.
